Living, loving, laughing, and learning in the new New Orleans

A Very New Orleans Baptism

Eve Kidd Crawford

It turns out that pretty much everybody knows Father Freddie, my husband's childhood friend.

Everybody knew everybody, which of course wasn’t surprising in a town where a simple afternoon trip to Dorignac’s brings me into touch with my former P.E. teacher who also happens to be the mother of the ex-wife of a guy I dated in high school and a Thursday night PTA meeting puts me back in touch with a girl I knew in junior high, my former middle school librarian and two people who know my mom. I mean, when I took Ruby to see Santa Claus this year, Santa turned out to be the father of her kindergarten teacher’s boyfriend. Imagine wrapping your 6-year-old brain around that!

So Georgia’s baptism was no exception – everybody knew everybody in at least a few different ways. Present at the baptism were, of course, her four godparents – two of my husband’s best friends and two of mine, one of whom I have known since I was 7 (and also dated in high school) and one of whom is sitting about 6 feet away from me as I type this. Also there were two of my dad’s oldest friends, who turned out to be former neighbors of my husband’s best friends. And of course, one of my dad’s best friends is also my ex-husband’s boss. Confused yet? Not if you’re from New Orleans. If you’re from New Orleans, this all makes perfect sense.

My godmother and her family were there, along with my godfather’s sister, and it turned out that they were childhood friends from the same neighborhood. A high school friend of mine showed up, and she is good friends with the childhood best friend of one of Georgia’s godparents. Performing the baptism was the Rev. Fred Devall, a childhood friend of Robert’s, who also knows a childhood friend of mine and the mother of one of Ruby’s best friends. My friend Catherine showed up, and I know her about eight different ways, and then she knew some other people there completely independent of me.

If six degrees of separation is the norm anywhere else, here it might be about two.

Recently, I got a text from a girl I have known since preschool. “I met Ruby’s Spanish teacher at a conference,” it said. When I told Ruby that Vera had met Señor Forbes, her greeny-gray eyes got huge. “Whoa,” she said. “They met each other, and they both know me!”

“It’s New Orleans, kid,” I told her. “Get used to it.”

It is hard to have secrets here, but that’s OK because no one really cares all that much. One Mardi Gras Day in the French Quarter, a group of high school friends and I ran into one of our teachers dressed in bondage gear with a whip between her teeth and a sign hung around her neck reading, “Spank me for a quarter.” We were all so shocked it didn’t even occur to us to hide our daiquiris. “Hey, kids,” she said, gesturing expansively to our illegal drinks and her black leather. “See y’all back in class on Thursday, and we’ll never speak of any of this again.” And we didn’t.

But despite that sort of laissez-faire attitude toward casual scandal, I feel very lucky to be raising my daughters here. That might sound counterintuitive, but it really isn’t. As much as I expect that they will find their respective teenaged ways into trouble, I also feel like they will never be that far away from someone – a bartender, a former neighbor, a coworker, an old teacher – who knows either them or me or my mom or my dad or my husband or my ex-husband or my in-laws. Sorry, Ruby and Georgia, but we have this town wired. I might not care if they have a drink on Mardi Gras Day when they’re 17, but I will probably find out about it anyway.

So Georgia’s baptism into the church was, in many ways, also her baptism into the city. And all I can say, to both, is, “Welcome, my sweet love. Welcome.”

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Living, loving, laughing, and learning in the new New Orleans

about

Eve is further proof, if any is needed, that New Orleans girls can never escape the city. After living here since the age of 3 and graduating from Ben Franklin High School, Eve moved to Columbia, Mo., where she received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Missouri School of Journalism and became truly, unhealthily obsessed with grammar.

She had originally intended to strike out to New York City and work in the cutthroat magazine industry there, but after Katrina, Eve felt a strong pull to return home, to her roots, her family, her waterlogged and struggling city – and a much more forgiving work atmosphere that would allow her to skip a routine of everyday makeup and size 0 designer label business suits and enjoy the occasional cocktail or three with an absurdly fattening lunch. She moved back home in January 2008 and lives in Mid-City with her two daughters, Ruby and Georgia; her stepson, Elliot; and her husband, Robert Peyton.

Eve blogs about the joys and struggles of living in post-Katrina New Orleans, the unique problems and delights of raising a child in such a diverse and challenging city – including her experiences with the public education system – and her always entertaining and extremely colorful family.

Eve has won numerous writing awards, including the Pirates Alley Faulkner Society Gold Medal, the Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence award for column-writing and Press Club of New Orleans awards for her Editor’s Note in New Orleans Homes & Lifestyles and for this blog, most recently winning the award for "Best Feature Affiliated Blog."